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Tinto Maps #9 - 5th of July 2024 - Carpathia and the Balkans

Greetings, and welcome to another Tinto Maps! This week we will be taking a look at Carpathia and the Balkans! It will most likely be an interesting region to take a look at, with a lot of passion involved… So I’ll just make an initial friendly reminder to keep a civil discussion, as in the latest Tinto Maps, as that’s the easiest way for us to read and gather your feedback, and improve the region in a future iteration. And now, let’s start with the maps!

Countries:
Countries.png

Carpathia and the Balkans start in a very interesting situation. The Kingdom of Hungary probably stands as the most powerful country in 1337, but that only happened after the recovery of the royal power enforced by Charles I Robert of the House of Anjou, who reined in the powerful Hungarian nobility. To the south, the power that is on the rise is the Kingdom of Serbia, ruled by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, who has set his eyes on his neighbors to expand his power. The Byzantine Empire, meanwhile, is in a difficult position, as internal struggles ended in Andronikos III being crowned sole emperor, at the cost of dividing the realm; both Serbia and Bulgaria have in the past pressed over the bordering lands, while the Ottomans have very recently conquered Nicomedia. The control over the Southern Balkans is also very fractioned, with a branch of the Anjou ruling over Albania, the Despotate of Epirus under the nominal rule of Byzantium as a vassal, Athens, Neopatria and Salona as vassals of the Aragonese Kings of Sicily, Anjou protectorates over Achaia and Naxos, and only nominal Byzantine control over Southern Morea. It’s also noticeable the presence of the Republics of Venice and Genoa, which control several outposts over the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. A final note: in previous maps, Moldavia was shown in the map, but we’ve removed it from it, and it will most likely spawn through a chain of events in the 1340s.

Dynasties:
Dynasties.png

The House of Anjou rules over Naples, Hungary, Albania, Achaia, and Cephalonia; they’re truly invested in their push for supremacy over the region. Apart from that, each country is ruled by different dynasties, except for Athens and Neopatria, ruled by the House of Aragón-Barcelona.

Locations:
Locations 1.png

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Locations 3.png

Locations 4.png
This week we’re posting the general map of the region, along with some more detailed maps, that can be seen if you click on the spoiler button. A starting comment is that the location density of Hungary is noticeably not very high; the reason is that it was one of the first European maps that we made, and we based it upon the historical counties. Therefore, I’m already saying in advance that this will be an area that we want to give more density when we do the review of the region; any help regarding that is welcome. Apart from that, you may notice on the more detailed maps that Crete appears in one, while not being present in the previous one; because of the zooming, the island will appear next week along with Cyprus, but I wanted to make an early sneak peek of the locations, given that is possible with this closer zoom level. Apart from that, I’m also saying in advance that we will make an important review of the Aegean Islands, so do not take them as a reference for anything, please.

Provinces:
Provinces.png

Provinces! Nothing outstanding to be commented on here; as usual, we’re open to any feedback regarding them.

Terrain:
Climate.png

Topography.png

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Terrain! The climate of the region is mostly divided between Continental and Mediterranean, with some warmer and some colder regions. Regarding the topography, the Carpathian mountains are famously important and strategic, while the Balkans are a quite hilly and mountainous region, which is also greatly covered by woods and forests.

Cultures:
Cultures.png

Here comes the fun part of the DD: The cultural division of the Balkans! A few comments:
  1. Hungary is full of different minorities. Transylvania, especially, is an interesting place: there we have a mix of ‘Hungarians’, ‘Transylvanians’ (which are the Romanian-speaking inhabitants of the region), ‘Transylvanian Germans’, and ‘Szekely’ people.
  2. We have divided the Southern Slavic-speaking region into their dialectal families of Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian.
  3. The Southern Balkans are mostly divided among Bulgarian, Albanian, and Greek cultures.
  4. We’re also portraying plenty of other cultures, such as Dalmatians, Aromanians, Sclavenes, Arvanites, Cumans, Jasz, or Ashkenazi and Romanyoti Jews.

Religions:
Religion.png

This one is also interesting. Apart from the divide between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, we have the Krstjani in Bosnia, Bogomils (the pink stripes both in Bosnia and Macedonia), and Paulicians in Thrace. The Jewish populations do not pass the threshold percentage to appear on the map, but there are plenty of communities across the region.

Raw Materials:
Raw Materials.png

The materials of the region. Something very noticeable is the richness of minerals, with plenty of Iron, Copper, Tin, Lead, Gold, and Silver. Specifically, Slovakia is very rich, and you definitely want more settlers to migrate to the region, and exploit its resources. The region is also very rich in agricultural resources, as you can see.

Markets:
Markets.png

The region is mostly divided among four markets: Venice, Pest, Ragusa and Constantinople.

Country and Location population:
Population 1.png

Population 2.png

Population 3.png

Population 4.png
Country and location population (which I’ve also sub-divided, and is under the Spoiler button).

And that’s all of today! I hope that you find the region interesting; we certainly think that it is. Next week we will go further south, and we will take a look at the Syrian Levant and Egypt. Cheers!
 
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Lovely map as always. What are the two different shades of blue stripes in the Peloponnese? Wallachians down there?
 
Before writing this, I want to note that I love how 28 people disagreed with me before even posting anything lol, great stuff guys.

I won't go on a massive rant because I don't have time, so here's the short version of what I think is wrong with the map:

Moldova shouldn't be integrated in the Golden Horde. We know that prior to the 1346 Moldovan march established by Dragos, who was a romanian noble from transylvania, there were still multiple Moldovan states there, basically various chieftains that would be semi independent, under influence of the horde for the eastern chieftains, influence of hungary for the chieftains next to the mountains in the west and influenced by galicia volhynia for the northern lords.

I have a ton of Romanian sources to back this up, such as Descriptio Moldavae, which was written by Dimitrie Camtemir in the early 1700s, a historian himself and prince of Moldova at the time, BUT I know that it can seem like oh ma ger it's just romanian propaganda, so will give foreign sources, namely the Polish chronicler Jan Dlugosz mentions that Romanians from the Moldovan parts fought alongside the Poles against the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1342, he also mentions Romanians from Maramures doing the same in his Annals of Jan Dlugosz. He lived in teh early 1400s and is the most accurate and early source we have from the time period of that region.

As for Transylvania, again, if you ask Romanians we got hundreds of sources, if you ask Hungarians they have the same, so I won't quote Romanian sources since they will ofc say that it was majority romanians in Transylvania in 1300s, but will instead mention Byzantine sources and outside sources such as:

Nikephoros Gregoras (1295-1360) - "Roman History" he talks about the Hungarian and Romanian principalities in the 13th and 14th century. Recommend reading the whole thing, beautiful book and contemporary for the period, gives massive insights into why the Hungarian crown brought previously german saxons to settle in Transylvania, as a means of evening out the unbalance of population, since Romanians were the vast majority of people there, were orthodox and refused conversion to catholicism, which was one of the main problems.

Georgius Pachymeres (1242-1310) - "Historia"
Mentions Hungary and neighbours including various lords in the moldovan areas within the 13th and 14th centuries.

Another major thing is that Transylvanian Romanians in 1300s were identical to the Romanians in Moldova and Wallachia. The reality is that Hungary formed Wallachia and Moldova with Romanians from Transylvania LITERALLY in this century, there were no major differences in language or customs between the 3 at the time, this maybe came around as a result of separation between the 2 areas in the NEXT 400 years, but even so, it's more of an accent than any actual different words. By the logic you're using right now, you should have 10 different cultures in England cause of different accents...and that's not how it works.

Also Wallachian as a culture is weird, the people there called themselves Romanians in the 1300s, so you can either call them that, OR call them Vlachs, which is what they were called by Germans, Slavs and by extension Byzantines, which used the words vlach that the slavs used for various political reasons.

If you need more sources, let me know, I got a ton more, just remember to read the whole thing, not look for paragraphs, cause that's now how reading goes, especially when it comes to history.

Much love to all my Balkan brothers and sisters and remember, Rome is eternal.
 
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I know you just used "annex MOL" before taking the screenshot, you can't fool me
Actually, it's commented out in the script with this comment: #Moldavia is set to spawn through a DHE: #TODO CAESAR-XXXXX
 
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May I request the following?
- a screenshot of areas
- some zoom-ins, I can't read these (also I can't read most of the Transylvanian locations):
1720184772801.png
 
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Will romani pops exist ? Past paradox games have lacked any representation of them despite it making sense. By the games start date they were already present in europe
 
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I think Szabdaka/ Subotica/ Zabadka should be added. It was first documented around this time and it was the capital of the serbian rebelion during the Ottoman conquests
 
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I'm sorry that this isn't the place, but I completely missed this in the Tinto Maps about the Poland region and now I notice it, and I don't know if you're gathering feedback from there anymore.

As a small request, could you split the location of Opava in two, having in the north Racibórz/Ratibor and Opava in the south? As shown in this picture. For those juicy German Empire's Silesia border. Please, please, please!

Locations (1) copy.png


Also, this shape is a little bit ugly imo :p but otherwise great map!

Countries.png
 
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